MURRIETA  Twenty years ago, the Murrieta Police Department assigned one of its patrol officers to Murrieta Valley High School.

It was an idea ahead of its time.

Murrieta Valley Unified School District Superintendent Patrick Kelley recalled that during that era, the sight of a police car in front of a school was cause for alarm.

"I was an elementary principal," Kelley said, "and I remember back in the '90s if there was a police car there, I would get calls in regards to -- 'What's going on?'"

Fourteen years after Columbine, and one month after Sandy Hook, that question rarely has to be asked any more.

Today, Murrieta's school resource officer program includes four Murrieta officers and a corporal who patrol 18 schools in the district, at every level from elementary to high school. The school resource officers, or SROs, in the Murrieta schools are supervised by a sergeant and supported by a juvenile crimes investigator.

"This school district absolutely gets it when it comes to protecting children, and school safety," Murrieta Police Chief Michael Baray said. "It's a priority for them and I applaud them for that."

Sure, school safety means taking measures to avert those kind of high-profile, although relatively isolated, tragedies. But there is much more to the SRO program, which helped the district win a Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association in 2008 for its safe schools program.

Officer Ontario Williams walks the beat as an SRO at Murrieta Mesa High School and Shivela Middle School. He equates the high school to a small town -- his first police job was as a sheriff's deputy in Alabama -- and his role as that of the police chief of the town.

"We wear a lot of different hats," said Williams, a 16-year veteran who has also worked everything from gang detail to traffic division. "Of course, our primary duty is school safety. I mean, we're here to enforce the law. But we mentor kids. We educate them when it comes to anything related to law. We provide some leadership. And we also work with the staff and administration to try to give them ways to keep (the) campus more secure."

That point was driven home locally on the same day -- Dec. 14 -- that 26 people, including 20 first-grade students, were shot to death by an emotionally troubled 20-year-old man in Newtown, Conn.

As word of the mass shooting spread across the nation, a maintenance worker at Shivela Middle School passed an open garage a few blocks from the school, and spotted a rifle, then placed a call to Williams.

Williams said he was returning to campus from a county mental health clinic when he got the call.

"He called me directly and said, 'There's some people in a garage' and that he saw a high-power rifle with a scope," Williams said. "He wanted me to be aware of it."

From his vehicle, Williams phoned the police dispatcher and officers were sent to the neighborhood. In the meantime, Williams placed another call. This one to Shivela Principal Marcie Kea.